Month: April 2017

I would like to share something with you, that impressed me a lot lately.

Of course we all know, that kindness doesn’t cost a thing and that it is a wonderful thing to be kind and to receive kindness.

It makes you feel so much better. Especially when you give. Being kind really doesn’t cost a thing. I personally try to be kind and do “random acts of kindness” at least once a day. It doesn’t always happen but even if its something small or a compliment etc. – it will improve someones day and I really like doing it!

Definitely try to choose kindness consciously for yourself. It will automatically come back to you somehow.

And today I would like to write about exactly this. When kindness comes back to you and you are the receiver rather than the giver.

It is so normal and “standard” for me to be kind to people without expecting anything back, that it always blows me away, when I receive some random act of kindness in return.

It doesn’t matter how small it is, I’m always so genuinely happy and grateful about the smallest acts of kindness.

Recently I was in Germany for holidays and experienced a lot of kindness over there. I never thought that Germans are as friendly and kind but I definitely changed my mind after my experience. Maybe this was down due the area etc., i really don’t know. But it was great.

It was the day when i was leaving Germany again. I had to get up really early (around 6.00 AM) to catch my bus (1,5hrs aka 170KM to the airport). I had everything booked and organised.

When I was at the bus-stop, it turned out that the bus had 2 hours delay, which meant i would never make it in time to the airport. Everything was planned and organised so it would line up perfectly. However, I did not plan the bus delay.

So I went to the train station nearby and asked the lovely lady at the Information-stand if she could help me and tell me which train or other bus would be leaving soon. She named me a few, but even though it was the fastest option, they still would have not arrived in time, in fact, after my flight was due.

I started to freak out a little at this stage. When i tried to postpone my flight, it was also not possible, since it was less than 3 hours to my flight now.

I was getting stressed more and more and really close to freaking out. The lovely lady remained really calm and tried to help me as much as she could. This was so nice of her and first awesome experience of the day.

Then I ran up to a car rental place (my last chance really). Turns out they had a car available and all seemed ok-ish, so I went ahead and booked it. However, suddenly my bank decided to security-block my card and I couldn’t pay. With time getting less and less now, I once again started to freak out because I also couldn’t go through the bank-phone-line which meant i was completely stuck. I couldn’t pay.

The guy who was handling my car- rental, also remained extremely calm, tried to calm me down and with his presence being very relaxed and nice in general, it genuinely helped me to not lose the plot completely.

Eventually i got everything sorted which meant i had to drive 170km in preferably less than 1.5 hours to still make it.

Being under a lot of stress and time pressure at this stage, i drove all the way very very fast (average 150km/h) which meant that I actually did some good time. I started to relax a little again but then i got caught in a traffic jam due an accident.

After 20 very long and painful minutes later, I was able to drive on again. You might can imagine how freaked out I was at this stage due the time delay.

I also took the wrong entrance-turn to the airport, so more stress and pressure. When i eventually found the drop off area for the rental-car, I had to queue in front of a parking gate. Twist plot: there was 5 more cars queued right in front of me.

Besides the fact that i still had to go through the security check and was really late now (20 minutes left til the flight!!!), i actually lost it.

I was queuing behind the cars and couldn’t believe that I actually made it that far. Just for the other people in front of me holding me up to drop the rental car and run in. I was sitting in the car and for the first time ever, loosing it completely. This included me looking up praying for some miracle, hammering down on the steering wheel and just screaming my frustration of.

Now, this leads me up to the 3rd and probably kindest person of the day.

A guy who was in front of me in his car, must have seen me freaking out. Because he stepped out of his car (which made me stop immediately to not look ridiculous of course), but it was already too late, he saw me freaking out!

He walked up to my window and started to talk to me. He told me to take a deep breath, just calm down a bit and that everything is going to be okay. He genuinely looked worried about me and tried to help me as best as he could.

And this really blew me away!! I was so shocked of him being so genuinely concerned about me (a complete stranger!) that i stopped freaking out.

A 2nd guy then helped me as well to skip the queue so I can drop of the car faster!!!!! How nice was that?????????????

On top of it, some nice people in the security-check-queue let me also skip the queue and believe it or not, i just about made the flight!!

Only afterwards I started to reflect on all those nice and kind people and I wish i would have the chance to genuinely thank them for that.

This helped me to not completly go crazy and remain somewhat okay whilst being under so much stress and time pressure.

Isnt it amaizng how much an act of kindness can influence and help a person?

To wrap this story of:

Always remember to be kind. It really doesn’t cost a thing and can help someone SO MUCH. You will never know. And also: somehow the Universe will return the kindness and help you out as well. Its a win-win for everybody!! 🙂

I most certainly will always do my best to be kind and helfpul. Still amazed!

I hope I might get your attention with this one! This is something important to me and I would love to pass on my findings and ideas in regards of New Year’s resolutions.

Life is a learning process right? It took me a good while but I came to an important conclusion last year.

What if I don’t do New year’s resolutions anymore. Or at least none for the whole year but rather for only a quarter. New quarter’s resolutions!

You might be wondering what this is all about. Let me tell you this:

Of course I tried New Year’s resolutions before. They did work out sometimes, but not as often as I would like. You may know this feeling too: Setting your intentions and goals only to realize after a few months, that you completely forgot about them or that they won’t be happening at all anyway.

There is 2 issues here:

A year is a lot of time! And if you tend to be inpatient (like me), then you might don’t have the patience to wait for the whole year to if see your dream/goal came true. Also: it’s simply frustrating to wait a whole year and hope to somehow achieve all your intentions and goals.

It’s so easy to lose track on it. As I said, there is a lot of time in a year and depending on your goal, you either lose sight of your goal and the action plan, or your goal is so big that you run out of time and experience stress and time pressure.

I could list more points here but I think those two are the most important ones.

This conclusion lead me to an experiment, which I started this year.

Instead of writing down New Year’s resolutions for this year (2017), I changed it up a bit and shortened the period of time to 3 months instead of a whole year. New quarter’s resolutions!

So instead of giving myself a whole year aka 365 days to achieve any of my goals and plans, I shortened it to a quarter. And who really knows if your goals from the beginning of the year, are still lining up with what you want by the end of the year :). What if you change your mind in-between? Do you understand where I am going with this? 🙂

I felt way more comfortable and less stressed about this idea, so I sat down on the 1st of January and created a list of goals that I wanted to achieve by the end of March 2017.

I came up with 7 main points that I wanted to focus on:

Mediate daily and create a habit of doing so

Do Yoga and/or exercises at least two times a week

Sell a certain item (that I found very hard to sell previously)

Read a minimum of 5 books

Save a certain amount of money

Manage a certain stretch/yoga pose (“hug”)

Start writing

After 3 months I can proudly say that I achieved 6 out of 7 points on my list. I didn’t quiet manage that Yoga pose because I got a bit lazy with the practice for that pose. 2x a week wasn’t enough so I only managed it halfway through.

But to be honest: I can’t believe I managed that many points. I know I can be ambitious and all that but to actually see 6 of 7 points ticked of that list? That feels amazing!!!!!!

I officially state now, that this experiment worked!!

So what is the difference here?

Let me get into that for a small bit to explain you why this worked way better for me (and possibly will work better for other people too).

As I mentioned above: the time-frame. For many people it works way better if there is “instant” results instead of waiting for a long while.

If you set yourself a goal that you can realistically achieve within 3 months: Set it! Don’t just think: oh I gonna do that anyway. Actually do set it, because it will feel amazing to tick that of your list.

Don’t be afraid to also mention new habits. Or simply use something that you already do (like in my case the mediating) and keep focusing on it on a daily basis instead of every few days etc. That is the perfect goal too!

Make sure all the goals and plans you write down, are achievable within the 3 months. This will take away some unnecessary pressure and keeps you motivated to keep going.

If you have a bigger goal or a dream in mind that will definitely take a bit longer, for example 6 months or even a whole year (or more years), you can still put that down too.

However, to make it easier for yourself, every quarter you can focus on just a few steps that will lead up to the big goal of yours and will help you achieve the goal/dream step by step. This way you don’t have to put yourself under stress or pressure but still work actively towards your goal. And it will feel amazing to know you actively work towards it.

Sometimes we just need to keep in mind, that we can achieve big dreams or goals only step by step and not straight away.

One thing leads to the other and sometimes the road to our goal will be full of bumps and curvy.

Don’t overlook those obstacles. Follow your gut and you will see, that step by step, you will get closer to your big goal!

The new quarterly’s resolutions will help you focus on the way towards your big goal.

Before you sit down and write a list of your new quarterly goals, make sure you are in a good mood. If it doesn’t feel right at the moment or you are stressed or distracted, just give it another day and write down all your goals, whenever you feel good and motivated.

I promise you: if you stick to this, you will feel sooooooo motivated and happy. It will help you realize that everything is achievable.